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Please assist. Amended page according to Grader - Rank dropped

I'm still fairly new to SeoMoz. I noticed quite a number of warnings on the "Crawl Diagnostic" page due to Title Element Too Long, and duplicate Titles. I began amending the guilty pages - but I just need to know if I am on the right track as certain rankings seem to be dropping since the change. The original Titles, Meta Desc - were put in place by the developers, and whatever advice I obtain from SeoMoz, I pass through to them.

If I may give an example:

My main landing page: http://www.durbansouthtoyota.co.za - had a Title of

I had them amend to: " Durban South Toyota New & Used Cars Dealer. Automark Car Dealership "

The original Meta Description: " Toyota - Durban South Toyota Dealer offering new & used Toyota vehicles in Prospecton, South of Durban. View our online Showroom. We have the 2012 Hilux Single Cab and Hilux Double Cab! Come price the new GT 86! Some of our new vehicles include the 2012 Avanza, Fortuner, Yaris, Quantum, GT 86 and more. We have an excellent Toyota After Sales Service, offering the best discount toyota parts and spares in the city. Extra cab hilux."

I had then amend to: " See what makes us KZN's Biggest & Best Toyota Dealership. An award winning team will showcase our huge selection of Toyota & other Brand cars on Sale. We have the Hilux Single Cab & Double Cab! The Affordable Etios & Exciting 86!"

These changes were in line with what I have been reading recently of making the Titles, Descriptions more natural as opposed to just listing a bunch of keywords together. I may be reading more into this than is the case, but for example: On Google.co.za (South Africa) we were ranking 13 for keyword "Toyota" on 25/09. I would really love to have a 1st page ranking for this keyword. Now on 02/10 we've dropped to 17. The only change from my side that I can think of was the Title and Meta Descriptions. Could this be a coincidence or am I doing something wrong?

3 Responses

Just at a glance I think your title tags are much more compliant. Good Job.

Try adding some content on the home page as well. As it stands there is not a lot of relevant crawl-able content on your site.So alt tags and content will help compliment your new title tag and meta description.

You are the first page for toyota dealers which I think is a much more targeted keyword for you.

I for one would not click on a result that had the title " Toyota | Durban South Toyota New & Used Cars Toyota Dealer | Automark Certified Used Vehicles | Toyota Pre-owned South Africa-Toyota Dealers-Private Toyota Sales | Toyota Dealer South Africa | New vehicles include 2012 Hilux 4x4 single cab | Fortuner | Avanza | Quantum | Yaris " . I would assume that the rest of the site is as poor quality as the title and move on to the next one.

If others do the same then the ranking is inconsequential.

If those titles were not causing you a problem then they definitely risked doing so. They really were awful . Not just spammy, but late 90s style spam at that!

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